A great and really cute game.

Would I recommend it?
Totally.

Does it have issues?
Totally.

Trying to 100% the game (which I did just now) is pure pain and I recommend to only do it if you hate yourself.

Not because of the difficulty or challenge the game can provide. There is only 1 Achivement locked behind a difficulty mode (which it allows you to change at any moment). But if you beat the boss on Normal and overwrite your save while having no backup in a different slot, then good luck doing Newgame+ up to the postgame for that.

What IS an issue. Are the sidequests. There are way too many for my taste. Quality over quantity is my preference. There are 100+ Side Quests and they are tedious, shallow, worthless and a pain to complete.

DO NOT FORCE YOURSELF TO DO THEM RIGHT AWAY! You can just accept them and not bother with them until you feel like it. Side Quests start appearing based on your Mainstory progress for the most part. Sure there are some Side Quests that have pre-requisites, but there are only very few.

Just enjoy the game for the story, the graphics, the characters and the gameplay. And if you still wish to 100% it. Go ahead.

8.5/10 is my score if I exclude the Side quests.
6.0/10 if I deduct the pain it caused me to stretch my 60 hour playtime by 20-30 hours.
It could have been a cozy 30-40 hours playthrough. But instead I feel like I wasted so much time doing these Side Quests.

This was so painful to complete. The story sucked. The gameplay itself was okay. Collecting items wasn’t that rewarding, exploring wasn’t rewarding. It was a grind to get through. The absolute worst part of this game, more so than the terrible writing, was how often you would finish a cutscene to be given control for 10 seconds to walk into another cutscene. Once you notice how often it happens, you can’t not notice it. I kept playing as I had paid for the game and it was too late to get refunded, but this game is not worth $90.95 AUD.

Also, the end boss fight was a laugh. Your NPC characters don’t dodge the wide range attacks ever, so you just burn through potions. Wouldn’t be a problem, except you don’t have access to all your potions, only 9 during a fight.

I’m not even mad at the game, I’m mad at myself for playing it through. This is the first review I have ever done, but I really hope I can save someone buying this at full price.

Feels like a ps2 jrpg with good graphics and I’m here for it. Super relaxing gameplay with just a pleasant vibe/tone and great music. Some complaints would be that it’s a bit too easy even on hard, and the dialogue can be too cheesy at times. Still good escapism overall.